Until now, the U.S. Travel Association's prediction of
decreased international travel to the U.S. has not come to fruition. Something
has changed, though.
U.S. Travel isn't reversing its forecast, nor has the trend
line changed. Rather, U.S. Travel has added to the data sources that inform its
Travel Trends Index.
The association had expected
inbound U.S. travel to start falling in February as a result of President
Donald Trump's travel ban. In April
and May,
BTN reported, that decline had not materialized in the index. "We kept
projecting drops in international visitation, and they kept not materializing,"
said U.S. Travel SVP for research David Huether. "However, we recently
were able to access new data inputs for the TTI to give us an even more
comprehensive picture."
The TTI covering May named the following data sources: STR,
TNS, Airlines for America, Statistics Canada, and the U.S. government's I-94 program
and Advanced Passenger Information System. The most recent index, which covers
July and includes revisions for the previous six months, omits Airlines for
America and adds OAG, the International Air Transport Association Billing
Settlement Plan, Sabre and major U.S. airlines' investor relations reports. Oxford
Economics analyzes the data on behalf of U.S. Travel.
Revised Numbers
U.S. Travel's monthly reports had indicated year-over-year growth
in January, February, March, April and May and static inbound numbers in June
and July. The revised numbers say inbound travel grew just barely in January,
when Trump was inaugurated, then declined in February by 6.8 percent and in March
by 8.2 percent, as Trump's travel ban faced litigation. Inbound travel grew in
April—boosted by Easter, according to U.S. Travel—and just slightly in May,
despite the March implementation of the Department of Homeland Security's laptop
ban. Inbound international travel to the U.S. contracted again in June and July.
When You Add in
Domestic Travel
While U.S. Travel's revisions said travel to the U.S. declined
year over year in some of the first seven months of 2017, July was the 91st
consecutive month of year-over-year travel volume growth when you count all
travel both to and within the U.S. On the TTI, a score above 50 indicates
year-over-year growth for a given month, and a score below 50 represents
contracted travel volume. July's index score squeaked into growth territory
with a score of 50.9.
U.S. Travel expects total travel to and within the U.S. to grow at
a rate of 1.2 percent from August through January, despite anticipated
contraction in international travel into the U.S during that time. Both
domestic business travel and domestic leisure travel will grow year over year
during that six-month period, according to the TTI. The association forecasts business travel
growth will outpace leisure.